- Start
- Dec 31, 202650% CONFIDENCEfrom the source
262 Fifth Avenue Rises Over the Empire State Building's Sightlines
- 262 Fifth Avenue is a residential pencil tower in Manhattan developed by Boris Kuzinez's Five Points Development, designed by Moscow-based Meganom with SLCE Architects as architect of record, standing 860 feet (260 m) with 26 apartments[2][3]
- The two sources disagree on the floor count - Wikipedia says 54 stories, ArchDaily 52 - while agreeing on the height and unit count; the residential area is given as 139,168 sq ft by one and about 140,000 sq ft by the other, with apartments averaging around 3,200 sq ft[2][3]
- It topped out in April 2024, and in December 2024 the New York Attorney General's office allowed unit sales to begin, with five apartments marketed; as of December 24, 2025 Meganom was "nearing completion"[2][3]
- The design shrank repeatedly over a decade: a September 2016 filing had 54 stories at 928 feet, DOB-approved plans the next month reached 1,009 feet with up to 41 apartments, the height was cut from 1,043 to 860 feet between August and December 2022, and the apartment count fell from 41 to 26 in mid-2023[2]
- Kuzinez assembled the site by buying 260, 262 and 264 Fifth Avenue in 2015-2016 for $101.8 million plus $5.8 million in air rights; demolition finished by September 2017, work appeared stalled in 2019, 260 Fifth was sold to Amir Loloi for $52.5 million in mid-2021, excavation followed by November 2021 and foundations in 2022, with Madison Realty Capital and Cottonwood Group lending a combined $180 million in November 2023[2]
- Its slenderness - a height-to-width ratio of about 19:1 on slabs mostly 45 by 45 feet - is achieved with a reinforced concrete core plus two parallel walls along Fifth Avenue, the core pushed outward for clear-span apartments, six mechanical floors acting as outriggers, a void working as a windbreak and a damper on the upper mechanical floor, all wind-tunnel tested including aeroelastic studies[2][3]
- Other engineering details: tapering high-strength concrete walls with 97 ksi rebar, foundations on Manhattan schist at 40-60 tons per square foot allowable bearing, and a curtain wall on the north and south faces with triple-glazed low-iron Low-E panels up to 20 feet high and 8.5 feet wide[3]
- The apartments are conceived as elevated "shelves" framing city views, inspired by aeronautics, with interiors by Norm Architects, at least one four-story unit, 10,850 sq ft of retail and a rooftop infinity pool[2][3]
- Systems include hydronic radiant heating, micro-climate HVAC delivering fresh air every hour - three times the NYC health-code requirement - with energy recovery, photovoltaic glass and Passive House principles[3]
- The tower has been criticised for blocking views of the Empire State Building from south of 28th Street, including most of Madison Square Park, for its pencil-thin look (Curbed's Christopher Bonanos) and for delivering few units relative to its height[2]
- The B1M's film of 27 August 2025, "262 Fifth Avenue: New York is About to Bury the Empire State Building", says the tower "is dividing Midtown" and runs chapters on its "biggest problem", "mutated architecture", "zombie urbanism" and the NYC housing crisis, but gives no height, cost or completion date[1]
References 366% CONFIDENCE
The first entry is always the pin's source. Overall confidence is a weighted average of how firmly each reference supports the start and end times used above; a reference counts half as much for every 180 days older than the newest.
- [1]50%youtube.com/watch?v=0eZt9D27TTkyoutube.com· Posted Sep 14, 2026· Starts Dec 31, 2026 ✓· 42% of score
Given as a target, not a fixed date, per archdaily.com[3]: Meganom "is nearing completion" of the tower as of December 2025, with delivery expected in 2026.
- [2]78%262 Fifth Avenue - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org· Added Sep 14, 2026· 42% of score
Wikipedia notes the building "topped out in April 2024" but gives no specific completion date, so it only weakly supports the pin's estimated 2026 target.
- [3]75%Meganom Nears Completion of 262 Fifth Avenue Residential Skyscraper in New York City - ArchDailyarchdaily.com· Published Dec 24, 2025· 15% of score
ArchDaily (24 December 2025) reports Meganom "is nearing completion" of the tower, matching the pin's dateConfidenceReasoning almost verbatim and supporting a 2026 delivery, about a year ahead of the pin's stored date.
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